In 2016, the German Consulate in New York City received 350 applications from Jewish individuals reclaiming their citizenship. In 2024, however, that same consulate received 1,500 applications, resulting in 700 naturalizations. Many attribute this increase of over 300% to the reelection of President Donald Trump and his increasingly authoritarian governance.
Eva-Lynn Podietz, a retired social worker in New York City, told NPR in July, “I just thought, well, it really would be good to have this passport…Jews are almost always in exile. So maybe that’s just part of being Jewish.” Laura Moser, Jewish author and former politician who moved to Germany in 2020, told me something very similar when I met her in a Berlin cafe in October, “I do think there’s something very Jewish about having an exit plan.”
However, for many Jews returning to Germany two generations after their ancestors fled Nazi persecution, the reality reveals that the nation has not moved as far from its past as they once imagined.
When I asked Moser how she explains her repatriation to native Germans, she told me, “I don’t volunteer that I’m Jewish anymore…I did in the beginning, but they fetishize us… They’re like, oh, wow, it’s so beautiful. Thank you. Thank you so much…They feel exonerated.”
She also offers me another interesting piece of information: “Almost all the congregations here are led by Germans who converted…I find it really distasteful to sort of adopt this victim’s mentality when their grandparents were literally Nazis.”
Deborah Feldman, who moved from New York City to Germany in 2014, recently released a book called Judenfetisch (Jew Fetish), exploring this phenomenon – and, more specifically, those she describes as “fake” Jews who convert and “lie about their ancestry and their upbringing in order to position themselves politically in ways that are personally profitable to them.”
In this story, I want to report on Jewish Americans who have reclaimed their German citizenship and either already relocated or are considering relocating to Germany. I want to use these first-hand accounts to depict the potential differences between their expected reception in Germany and the realities they face upon arrival.
To report this story, I want to contact Deborah Feldman, whom I quoted above, Tanya Gold, a Jewish journalist who has worked on similar projects previously, and, through talking to these sources, hopefully get in contact with more Jewish-Americans in Germany.
In conclusion, I hope this story illuminates how U.S. domestic politics and Germany’s conception of “memory culture” shape the experiences of Jewish Americans both in Germany and at home, while also touching upon questions of return from exile and the limitations of historical redemption.
